Re: Assassinating Americans Without Due Process

This WaPo piece was written by Bush’s former speech writer, Marc Thiessen, last May, eight months after Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed by a drone strike.

Where are the congressional hearings charging that Obama is running an “imperial presidency“?Where is the New York Times editorial declaring that Obama has overseenthe damage it did to the constitutional system of checks and balances“? Where is the three-year investigation and 5,000 page report from Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee into Obama’s drone campaign?

Last year Amnesty International demanded Bush’s arrestfor ordering the capture and interrogation of senior terrorist leaders,after which they were sent (alive) to Guantanamo Bay for trial. Wellaccording to the Times, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president ordereddrone strikes that use cluster bombs and have allegedly killed not onlytheir intended targets but also “neighboring families.” Why isn’tAmnesty demanding Obama’s arrest for war crimes?

The fact is, withthe critically important exception of terrorist interrogation, Obamahas embraced nearly all of Bush’s major counterterrorism policies.Rendition continues. Indefinite detention continues. The trial ofterrorists by military commission continues. The National SecurityAgency’s “warrantless wiretapping” of terrorist communicationscontinues. While Obama shut down the CIA interrogation program, hegladly used the intelligence it produced to find and kill Osama binLaden. Instead of seeking congressional authorization to killAmerican-born terrorists with drones, Obama has instead relied on secretJustice Department memos. And while Obama disclosed Bush’s secretinterrogation memos, he has steadfastly refused to make his own secretdrone memos public.